


take a shitty day and make it alright

by CordeliaRose



Series: Lowlife [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Lacrosse, M/M, bad boy Theo rises once again, but yes tis included, except he's actually just a dork, not too heavily and all used correctly etc, prescription drug use mentioned, so please be careful and take care of yourself!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27608677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CordeliaRose/pseuds/CordeliaRose
Summary: Liam gets injured during a lacrosse game. Theo isn't sure how to be aloof and caring at the same time.
Relationships: Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken
Series: Lowlife [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/968349
Comments: 11
Kudos: 91





	take a shitty day and make it alright

**Author's Note:**

> *tries to lean on the doorframe casually but misses and just absolutely timbers onto the floor, breaking every bone in my face*  
> two and a half years, huh. this has been in the works for pretty much that whole time. i have no excuses!  
> ty alice for the beta'ing/general hype-womaning you did <3  
> hope y'all enjoy!

It’s a big deal, this game, Theo knows, which is why he’s in the stands with everyone else for once, rather than skulking around underneath them – he hates being up here on the flimsy metal and wood, he’d much rather be on solid ground.

Liam keeps telling him why this game is so important, but as much as he enjoys helping his boyfriend practice with his own minimal lacrosse skills, he just cannot grasp the logistics of leagues for shit - which is apparently why this game matters more than the others, because it’s in a higher league or something, but the way the leagues are calculated is baffling - anyway. Theo doesn’t really care, just cares that this is important to Liam, and therefore it’s important to him by extension.

Even if Liam’s barely contained adrenaline over the past week hadn’t gotten him pumped up, the crowd around him is buzzing with so much energy that he’d probably be hyped up anyway. He’s sandwiched between Liam’s parents, Dr. Geyer on his left and Mrs Geyer on his right - and seriously, Liam’s mom, Jenna, is psychic, as Theo has said and will continue to say. Liam just scoffs when he says that, sometimes throws a small object at him, but always aimed to barely brush his shoulder, and reminds Theo that his mom is a counsellor so of course she’s able to read people like a book. That was also why Theo was so scared when he was first invited over for dinner, because she specialises in troubled adolescents and juvenile delinquents, and Theo is all too aware that he fits rather too snugly in those boxes. Most parents don’t want his kind hanging around their child, and the small fraction not in the ‘most’ are the kind of parents like Corey’s, who spend half of their life drunk or stoned and the other half pretending they have no responsibilities, or the kind like his own, who spend most of the time abroad on business trips so they don’t have to look at the painful reminder of their son, the one who lived while the golden child died of a freak heart attack.

Liam’s parents are in the ‘most’; good jobs, good house, good family, good parents. Theo has set out on a mission of self-sabotage that first meet-the-parents dinner, turning up in his usual leather jacket and a pair of jeans with so many rips and tears that they bordered on obscene (some deliberate, some from various fights), a deliberately quick spritz of cologne not enough to cover up the distinct stink of cigarettes (which he has cut down on because Liam hates the habit so much, but he was stressed, cut him some slack), sunglasses firmly affixed (pretentious, Liam always snarks, you’re not Bono, just take them off can you even see what the fuck Theo) and to complete the image, he did absolutely nothing to cover up the dark shadow of a bruise spanning an impressive area of skin between and over his cheek and jaw. The entire image was constructed to make Liam’s parents glance at him once and cry ‘great non-denominational deities above, who is this grubby urchin, put him back on the streets where he belongs and before he corrupts our darling son’, but they hadn’t. Liam had given him a fierce scowl, clearly knowing exactly what Theo was planning, but Dr. Geyer had shaken his hand and enquired whether he’d done anything about the bruise (he hadn’t) and would he like to see a tumour in a jar that had hair and teeth?

Liam groaned in the background and told his dad that not everyone wanted to see gross tumours, and then Theo had surprised all of them by accepting the offer and enjoying quarter of an hour learning about teratomas while Liam puttered about and occasionally made retching noises.

Mrs. Geyer - Jenna - had asked Theo about his hobbies over the meal, and if he liked any subjects, and when Dr. Geyer asked what his parents did Theo didn’t even have time to tense before Jenna knocked her glass of water over and then diverted the topic to some TV show she’d been watching.

That was his original point, anyway, that Jenna must be psychic, because she handled that situation ridiculously gracefully, that and so many others. For all that he’s a lovely man, Dr. Geyer leans more towards the -less end of the tact spectrum a lot of the time. But the point was, Jenna must be psychic, because she’s pressed herself firmly against Theo’s side and then squeezed her husband closer too under the guise of putting an arm around his shoulders, and rather than feeling claustrophobic it just feels warm. When Beacon Hills scores they all jump up and whoop and clap, and when it looks like the opposing team are going to get a goal Jenna grips one of Theo’s hands and squeezes and Theo squeezes back.

At the half-time interval, Dr. Geyer had taken Jenna’s trip to the bathroom as an opportunity to question Theo about the black eye he’d been sporting last week. Theo knows he presses the issue because he’s worried (“they really like you,” Liam says, “they keep inviting you over, like at least twice a week. They don’t invite Mason over that much, but maybe that’s because of all the fires we start with our science experiments.” His grin turns impish and it makes Theo’s insides clench in the best way possible, and apparently Liam isn’t that bothered about the homework he whined about all day because he happily lets Theo pull him down onto the bed and make out with him until his mom gets home) and wants to know if Theo’s in trouble at home.

Theo tells Dr. Geyer quite truthfully that his parents didn’t hit him, they aren’t abusive - not physically, at least, there’s more than one way to skin a cat - and promises to tell someone if that changes. It won’t, Theo knows, because the brief pockets of time that his parents are home for rarely coincide with his own time at home. Sometimes he gets back from school and finds half-drunk coffee mugs left on the kitchen table, or stubs his toe on the sofa because his mother decides that the living room she never fucking uses would function so much better if the couch was just three inches over to the left. Still, he’ll take them over Corey’s parents, who are actually the reason for the latest bruises. He always knows when they’re arguing (screaming, fighting, abusing), even when they’re not loud enough for a neighbour to call the cops, who will do absolutely fucking nothing to remove Corey from an abusive home, but whatever, defund the police and all cops are bastards, he always knows because his bedroom faces directly opposite Corey’s, and whenever something goes down the younger boy curls up on the windowsill, leaving his silhouette clear as the bat signal.

Sometimes he reads or does homework or listens to music, but usually he just sits, hunched up. Theo’s texts of you ok or 911? or that’s really bad posture get yep or nope or says you. Then the next day he pretends not to see that Corey is holding himself awkwardly or limping or has a fresh cut because when he got up to stretch his legs he stood on a creaky floorboard and his dad threw him against the wall for it. The closest they ever got to talking about it actually involved zero talking, and was when Theo’s eyes lingered a little too long on a bruise shaped curiously like a hand during the drive to school, and then at the next red light Corey had fled the truck and turned up two hours later, then refused to talk to Theo for three days.

Theo got the message.

So when he’d texted you good last week he fully expected something like shipshape or quite up to snuff, because Corey has a thesaurus app that makes suggestions on his texts and he delights in making his messages sound like the works of an eighteenth century poet. Instead, he gets a simple, heart-breaking no and runs over to the house opposite his. He slips in past the arguing couple without being seen and bundles their shaking son down the stairs and out the door, and shields Corey from his dad when he throws a sloppy punch that still hurts like a bitch. They drove out around with the windows down for close to an hour before Corey managed to calm down enough to call Mason and ask to stay the night.

Dr. Geyer doesn’t look happy about his answer, perhaps sensing that he’s lying by omission, but Jenna returns with a new bucket of popcorn and the game starts a minute later, so the subject is reluctantly dropped. It’s kind of nice, knowing how much someone cares. He’s sure they’d adopt Corey if they knew how he was being treated, but as much as he hates it, it’s not his secret to tell.

It’s in the second half of the game that Liam gets hit.

It happens in a second. One moment Liam is running down the field with the other players, mud churning under their studded trainers, then he gets tackled and literally flies a few feet, landing awkwardly in a messy heap of lacrosse gear. The referee blows the whistle and the coaches run over and for some awful gut-wrenching seconds or hours Liam is limp and still and Theo can taste blood in his mouth

but then Liam gets up with the help of the coaches, and limps over to one of the benches.

Theo sits down with Jenna when did he get up and swallows the blood he bit his tongue and watches his boyfriend being checked over by the medical team for the remaining twelve minutes and thirty-four seconds of the game. As soon as the game is called, with Beacon Hills the victor because of Liam’s fucking superb goals before he went off, Jenna and Dr. Geyer charge down to the field, Theo following just a second later because he had to convince his frozen muscles to start working again.

Liam is very clearly in pain, folded over on himself and clutching at his side, and doing weird breathing like he’s one of those pregnant women on TV. Under normal circumstances Theo would be his usual dick self about it; he has it down to a fine art, but somehow, he doesn’t think it would be appreciated right then. What probably would be appreciated is some very mushy PDA-style TLC, but Theo isn’t sure he can do that in front of a) the whole school and b) Liam’s parents, so he just crouches down cautiously on Liam’s uninjured side and pats at his knee clumsily, hoping the motion conveys all the love he’s feeling. It does, if the touched shine to Liam’s eyes is any indication.

Apparently trusting that Theo will keep Liam safe while they get more details – which brings up a tsunami of emotions he’s stubbornly pushing away – Dr. Geyer peels off to speak with the medics, and Jenna heads over to Coach to sign some paperwork and sell her soul to the Devil, or at least a medical insurance company. “You okay?” Theo asks softly, which seems like a stupid question but Liam knows what he really means, and nods. “Good. I’m proud of you.” Liam rolls his eyes at that, and Theo can hear the protest (“I have IED, Theo, I’m not an actual IED, I don’t explode at every single tiny provocation.”)

Several of Liam’s teammates come barrelling over once they’ve completed the post-game ritual of chest-bumps, one-armed hugs and general manly posturing. Theo doesn’t know if there’s some kind of hierarchal etiquette that dictates he should move and let the captain take the place by Liam’s side, but like fuck he’s going anywhere. Especially not now that one of Liam’s hands has drifted from his injured side and latched onto Theo’s, gripping like a lifeline.

“Dude, you went down so hard,” Stiles blurts, and is subsequently ignored with practiced ease by everyone else as he continues babbling about concussions and hairline fractures and subdural haematomas.

“What did the medics say?” Scott asks, his tone gentle in a way that always amazes Theo. He can’t imagine being so vulnerable in front of anyone, let alone everyone, but Scott wears his heart on his sleeve like a badge of honour. “It can’t be too bad, right? Or they would have called an ambulance, or something.”

Dr. Geyer joins their small huddle, saving Liam from grunting out an answer. “They think it’s just some bruising, and I’m inclined to agree. But I’d rather be safe than sorry, so we’re going to get you an X-ray to make sure you haven’t broken any ribs.”

“Exposing me to unnecessary radiation?” Liam protests weakly. “You’re killing my cells, Dad. I might become a mutant.”

Dr. Geyer looks mildly amused and moderately impressed. “I see your tutoring sessions have actually involved tutoring,” he says with a pointed, twinkling glance towards Theo, who ducks his head to hide the blush. So not badass to blush.

"And here we were thinking it was all code for making out,” Jenna adds, grinning at the small crowd that’s amassed around her son. 

“Only a little bit,” Liam replies shamelessly, tilting towards Theo so his elbow nudges his shoulder, a small don’t freak out, we’re just teasing. Someone wolf-whistles and Theo has never been so glad that the stadium lights aren’t directed towards them. He’s got his sunglasses on, sure, but they can’t hide the fact that his entire face is bright red.

Amid the laughter, Scott offers, “Do you need help getting to the car?” and drops his helmet and stick to pull his gloves off, dropping them all on the bench next to Liam. “I’ll take one side – Theo, you got the other?” Theo starts at his name but transitions the movement into standing up and helping to hoist Liam to his feet. Liam’s friends, although originally hostile, had now taken to being polite to Theo and calling him by his name instead of asshole or Raeken or douchebag. Baffling. He can’t even hold a grudge about their initial dislike, because if he thought somebody was hurting Liam he’d be up in arms too. He hates not being able to hate people. Hate is such a simple emotion; respect and ambivalence are encroaching into ‘complicated’ territory, and actually outright liking someone is such a laughably convoluted knot of emotions that Theo just shoves it under his bed like a shameful secret and doesn’t let it see the light of day.

“I’m not a complete invalid,” Liam complains, but slings his arms around their shoulders all the same. Slowly – Theo would say painfully so, but that seems kind of insulting considering his boyfriend is actually in a lot of pain – the trek across the field to the car park begins. Malia bounces down from the stands and clears a path for them, barking at people to get out of the way if they don’t move in time; Lydia, also in the stands, follows behind them and smooths over ruffled feathers with diplomatic apologies.

Stiles continues ranting about traumatic brain injuries.

* * *

They make it back to the Dunbar-Geyers' an hour later. The hospital’s ER was thankfully quiet, and even so Liam had been fast-tracked for the X-rays and then the pharmacy - “Perks of working here,” Dr. Geyer had said, exchanging friendly waves and small talk with the nurses on duty.

Nothing was broken, which means that Liam needs to rest for two weeks and then can go back to light exercise – light, the nurse emphasised, eying the lacrosse jersey with trepidation and a resigned expression. The bruises were pretty spectacular, though, so Liam had been prescribed some strong painkillers to take over the weekend, and some slightly weaker ones to take when school rolled back around.

Liam spends the entire drive home leaning back against his seat, gazing at the roof of the car with the intensity of a thousand burning suns. When the car pulls to a stop in the driveway, he looks to Theo, announces, “You’re pretty,” much to the amusement of his parents and the mortified bewilderment of Theo, and tumbles out of the car when he opens the door too quickly, all within the space of four seconds.

Jenna looks at her son – being helped to his feet by his step-father – and then to Theo. “Sure that’s the one you want?” she asks with a conspiratorial grin.

Theo smiles back. His eyes crease up at the sides with it. “He’s a little faulty, but he’ll do.” In his peripheral vision he sees Liam stagger to his feet, announcing that he’s alright, nothing to worry about, then almost pitch to the ground as soon as he tries to take a single step forward. He loves him so much. It’s gross.

* * *

Jenna wisely decides against spaghetti bolognese for dinner after watching Liam fail to untie his shoelaces – Theo has to do it, to which Liam beams dopily and declares, “My hero!” - and orders pizza instead. Dr. Geyer pops Alien into the DVD player and they settle on the couches, Liam’s parents on one and the boys on the other. Liam situates himself between Theo’s legs, leaning back heavily against his chest and wrapping Theo’s arms around his stomach, then tugging a blanket over the two of them.

The position makes it pretty difficult to eat the pizza, particularly when Liam only relinquishes one of his arms and steadfastly refuses to release the other one. “You’re ridiculous,” Theo grumbles. Liam’s face crumples in genuine distress. “But I love you.” 

“Yeah you do,” Liam says smugly, and takes a bite of his pizza that is also somehow smug. “You love me so much,” he says with his mouth full.

“Sure, buddy,” Theo says mildly, patting him on the shoulder. It’s a better alternative to screeching yes I really do and performing spontaneous cartwheels in the living room, which is what he actually wants to do. But. Feelings, reputation, not destroying the Dunbar-Geyers' beautiful home, etc.

“So, so much,” Liam mutters to himself, happily munching another slice while he watches someone’s stomach explode on screen. Jenna makes a small disgusted noise and puts her own down. Dr. Geyer, who makes a living off examining and handling internal organs, is as undisturbed as his step-son. 

Theo could have predicted all of those reactions if he’d wanted to. He knows this family. Knows their personalities, their dynamics, their quirks. He knows them better than he knows his own; than he wants to know his own. He’s already finished eating, so he buries the lower half of his face into Liam’s bird-nest of hair and stays there for the rest of the film.

He’s on the verge of sleep by the time the credits roll, in paroxysms of quiet paradise from being so surrounded by Liam, the smell of his shampoo and body wash, the soft texture of his hair and the firm lines of his body where he’s welded himself to Theo, the steady in-out and thud-thud-thud of his lungs and heart and the warm curl of his fingers around Theo’s.

The doorbell cuts through the fog rudely, Jenna rolling to her feet and complaining about being too full to move as she goes to answer the door, then laughing and saying, “Bad pennies, the lot of you,” and standing back to let Liam’s pack of friends fall into the house.

“We brought brownies,” Theo hears Mason say under the clamour of the rest of them toeing off shoes and shrugging off jackets, “from that bakery on fourth.”

“And that’s why you’re my favourite,” Jenna announces, kisses him on the forehead and takes the paper bag through to the kitchen. Dr. Geyer goes to join her, turning off the DVD player but leaving the TV on and placing the remotes on the arm of the sofa behind Theo.

“Our friends are here,” Liam tells Theo, blinking up at him with eyes as wide as a cartoon lamb. Clearly he was about to drop off himself, and Theo is rendered speechless by adoration so he can’t even correct him to ‘your’, ‘your friends’.

“Hey, man,” Scott is first into the room, hair curling at the edges where it’s damp from a shower. “How are your ribs?” He nods as a greeting to Theo. Theo doesn’t nod back, because he’s hiding himself even more thoroughly in Liam’s mane.

“Bruised,” Liam replies, drawing out the vowel sound in disgust. “I have drugs for it.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” Scott grins and sits on the rug, leaning back against the coffee table. The rest of Liam’s friends filter in and invent their own seating arrangements rather than using the actual chairs available to them. Malia and Stiles end up on the coffee table, the fruit bowl forcing them to crouch like gargoyles rather than sit. Lydia perches on a pouf, somehow graceful despite it being a glorified beanbag, and Mason and Corey claim the arm of the couch, opposite to the one supporting Theo. 

“Thanks for coming to my birthday party,” Liam slurs once they’re all settled. He’s not so out of it that he hasn’t registered Theo tensing behind him, and now his fingers are stroking clumsily at Theo’s wrists even as he vomits nonsense at the room. “We should put some music on.”

Theo’s about to happily take him up on that offer and slip out under the excuse of finding the portable stereo that he’s pretty sure is all the way up in the attic and will probably take him at least fifteen minutes to find, what a shame, when Jenna and Dr. Geyer reappear to distribute plates of brownies between them all. Liam shuffles forward and carefully pushes himself upright to eat, dropping Theo’s wrists and leaving the front of him inexplicably cold.

The brownie is good, Theo supposes, but it’s kind of hard to appreciate anything when he feels like he’s being flayed open, skin pinned back like a butterfly’s wings so everyone in the room can peer inside him and see who he really is underneath the bravado. Liam tears down his walls like they’re paper and he’s a monsoon, and it feels exactly as intense as that, like all of his nerves are raw and exposed, but he also doesn’t care; Corey he’s grown up with, they built those walls together brick-by-brick – but showing everyone else anything other than the asshole persona he’s perfected is just – he feels like he’s been reduced down to atoms, ripped apart on the basest of levels.

He’d rather be face-to-face with a rabid bear than this. His heart is racing like he is, at least, urging him to get up get out get free. Swallowing down that instinct might just be the bravest thing he’s ever done in his life. He doesn’t even have Liam as a grounding mechanism anymore, his only points of anchor where his own thighs bracket Liam’s. 

Corey, comfortably compressed between his own boyfriend and the wall, meets his eyes. Understanding already there. If Theo made an excuse about going to the bathroom or getting a drink, he knows Corey would immediately find a way to steer the attention away from his absence, give him a few minutes to collect himself.

Liam twists his neck and sees that Theo has finished, empty plate precariously balanced on the back of the sofa. He smiles, ridiculously bright, and then tilts backwards until they’re back in their original positions. Oh, Theo thinks. That’s about it. His brain fizzed out in a spark of stars at the very moment Liam’s bare skin, the small of his back where his T-shirt had ridden up, brushed against Theo’s arm.

He doesn’t need to run. He’s not happy, he’s not comfortable, his adrenaline is still shrieking at him to do something, but he doesn’t need to. Not when he has Liam’s hair tickling at his face again, messy and fragrant.

“How old am I again?” Liam asks, barging past Theo’s miasmic state and tearing off a chunk of his brownie. He considers it before chewing it ponderously, apparently inventing a new form of divination.

“Ninety-seven,” Theo says before anybody else has the chance to tell the truth. “You’re so old, dude.”

“I’ve had a good life,” Liam agrees, a touch of mournfulness in his tone. “It’ll be coming to an end soon. And then I’ll be just...dust. Dust in the wind.” He raises his arm in a sweeping arc to indicate how the dust will be carried, accidentally spraying a few fine brownie crumbs as he goes. Dr. Geyer makes a small noise of protest in the back of his throat.

That is not remotely where Theo imagined Liam would take the joke, but he’s enjoying it. “I didn’t know you want to be cremated,” he says conversationally. Everyone else seems vaguely alarmed by the morbid twist the discussion has taken – apart from Malia, who is preoccupied with licking her thumbs and pressing them against the brownie residue on her plate, determined to get every last crumb.

“I don’t know what that is,” Liam says solemnly. “All I know is that once I turn one hundred, I’ll crumble into dust.” He finishes his brownie and hands the plate to Scott, who looks equally confused at his delegation to waiter as he does at Liam’s ramblings. “Are you sure I’m ninety-seven?” He starts examining his hands. “I don’t have any wrinkles.”

“You have a really good skincare regime,” Theo assures him.

“Makes sense.” Liam nods decisively to himself and lifts his gaze from his hands, then brightens. “What are you guys all doing here?” he exclaims delightedly. “I haven’t seen you for ages!”

* * *

Quarter of an hour later it’s been firmly established that Liam saw his friends at school that day, he is at school because he’s actually sixteen, not ninety-seven (“rude to tell lies, Theo,” he huffs, “but I forgive you,”), and the reason he can’t remember getting absolutely fucked up during the game is because he got given some painkillers that got him absolutely fucked up in a different way.

At the end of it all, Liam has just one question: “Do I have school tomorrow?”

“No, sweetheart, it’s Saturday tomorrow,” Jenna tells him, gathering up everyone’s plates to take into the kitchen – Malia has acquired half of them herself, scoffing at her friends “waste of perfectly good food” and scrounging the crumbs.

“Good. Let’s watch some TV then,” Liam decides, reaching an arm behind him blindly and nearly actually blinding Theo in the process. Theo will remind him of this next time he gives him shit for his indoor sunglasses, remember when you almost gouged my eyes out, these are for my own protection. He sources the remote, stares at it for a few seconds, then hands it to Theo. “I don’t know how to work this, can you put the goose episode on for me?”

Liam’s friends all look varying degrees of confused, and Stiles looks like he’s about to start waxing poetic about concussions again. Theo just navigates to the Bob’s Burgers tile on the TV home screen and begins scrolling through the episodes. “Wait, the Thanksgiving one or the one when Tina goes on a date with the goose?” he mumbles, flitting between season five and season nine.

“The Thanksgiving one is turkeys!” Liam exclaims, mortally offended.

“What’s happening,” someone says faintly in the background. It sounds like it might be Stiles.

Theo holds his hands up in surrender, and skips through to find the goose episode. “This one?”

Liam squints at the description, and frowns again. “No. I don’t want this one. I want the James Bond one. Why are you on this one?”

In the kitchen, Jenna starts laughing. Theo wants to laugh himself, but he figures that Liam might actually explode with apoplectic indignancy if he does, so he just finds the new episode and puts it on. 

“Thank you,” Liam chirps, and wriggles a little so he can plonk his head down with one ear over Theo’s heart. Theo shifts himself when he sees the position causes his breathing to become a little more laboured, because of course Liam is ignoring the fact that he has an injury to his ribs and general breathing area in favour of cuddles, and then he tugs the blanket back over Liam’s shoulders and smooths it down so it won’t get in the way of the TV.

When he’s sure Liam is settled he looks up to find that pretty much everyone is staring at him – Mason and Lydia are at least making an effort to pretend they’re not, but the others don’t seem to have mastered the art of subtlety. After a few seconds of excruciating silence – aside from some dramatic music and high-pitched squealing from the show – Scott nods slowly and turns his attention to the screen, the others following his lead, though Malia bares her teeth in a kind of terrifying grin first, and Mason shoots him a wink too.

Theo isn’t sure what just happened, but he feels like it was positive. There are no assassination attempts on him during his sleep, at least, when Jenna decrees it’s too late to drive home and enlists her husband into pumping up a small army of air mattresses which they scatter around the open-plan ground floor. Liam’s friends – Theo's friends? - collapse onto them over the next hour, Lydia curling up gracefully on one like a cat and rolling her eyes good-naturedly at Stiles’ attempt to clamber on without disturbing her, Malia belly-flopping onto another and forcing Scott to fit himself around her like some kind of human pretzel, Mason and Corey watching another few episodes with them before squashing themselves into approximately one-fifth of the available space so they can presumably suffocate together in the night. 

Liam falls asleep on top of Theo, still on the couch, so Theo just nabs a cushion from the other sofa, thankfully within arm’s reach, and settles down there himself. He’ll regret it tomorrow, when his neck refuses to turn more than forty-five degrees in either direction and the entire right side of his body has pins and needles, he’s sure, but Liam has his hands curled in the front of Theo’s shirt and his head tucked into the junction between Theo’s neck and collarbone and there isn’t anywhere else Theo wants to be.

**Author's Note:**

> feedback is very appreciated if you feel like dropping me a line!  
> my [tumblr](https://cordelia---rose.tumblr.com/) if anyone's interested, i also love getting messages on there! validation in general is great and stops me from feeling like i'm screaming into the void  
> i would also looooove prompts/ideas for fics in this series if you have any!


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